s the
pluck to save her, they look savage and disappointed, and snatch her
away just as if they were recovering stolen goods. My eye, though,
Mas'r Harry, it was a narrer escape--worse than swinging under that old
donkey's nose!"

My only reply was a shudder.

"I didn't think it so precious bad, Mas'r Harry, when we was up at that
landing-place in the ship; but I do think now as we're getting it rather
warm: only ashore here a few days, and we've had our lodging shook about
our ears; I've been pitched over a precipice like the side of a house;
and you've been a'most swallowed and drowned by a great newt. I'll give
in. It is a trifle hotter than it was at home. But say, Mas'r Harry,
it ain't going to be all in this style, is it? Why it's like being
heroes in a book--Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday, and all on in that
tune, and us not knowing how much hotter we're going to have it!"

"Matter of chance, Tom," I said, wringing the water from my clothes as I
stood in the hot sun. "We may be here for years and have no more
adventures. Perhaps, after so rough a welcome, matters may turn out
gloriously."

Tom began to whistle and pick leaves to chew and spit out again, till I
pronounced my readiness to proceed.

"Paddles are both in the boat," said Tom, then, as he secured the canoe
by its bark rope to a tree, "we've got over the river, Mas'r Harry,
that's one thing; but how far we are down below the landing-place I
dunno, I'm sure."

We proved to be much farther below than I thought for, enough time
elapsing for my clothes to get nearly dry in the patches of hot sun we
passed as we wound our way through the forest, the rushing noise of the
river on our right guiding us in our efforts to keep within range of the
bank, which we avoided on account of the huge beasts we had seen basking
there.

"This is a rum sort of country and no mistake, Mas'r Harry," said Tom at
last, as he stood mopping the perspiration from his face; "but, somehow
or other, one feels just the same here as one did in the old place, and
I'm as hungry now as if I hadn't had a morsel to eat for a week. Is it
much farther, Mas'r Harry?"

"I don't know how many miles we've come," I replied.

But his words had fully accounted for a strange sensation of faintness
that troubled me. A little more perseverance, though, brought us to the
track--one that we might have reached in a quarter of the time had we
known the way.

A short walk showed us tha